After World War II, a new
world order came into being in which two superpowers, the United
States and the Soviet Union, played the leading roles. Their
ideological differences led to the arms race of the Cold War and
fears of a global nuclear conflict. The rest of the world was also
drawn into the bipolar bloc system, and very few nations were able
to remain truly non-aligned. The East-West conflict came to an end
in 1990 with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the consequent
downfall of the Eastern Bloc. Since that time, the world has been
driven by the globalization of worldwide economic and political
systems. The world has, however, remained divided: The rich nations
of Europe, North America, and East Asia stand in contrast to the
developing nations of the Third World.

The first moon landing made science-fiction dreams reality in the
year 1969.
Space technology has made considerable progress as the search for
new
possibilities of using space continues.

From the successful war for independence against British colonial rule, India and Pakistan emerged as two self-contained states in
1947. Both countries' claims for the Kashmir region led to a continuous
political and military conflict. While India developed a democratic
parliamentary democracy domestically, Pakistan was ruled by an
authoritarian military government. Religious tensions led to the
separation of East Pakistan as Bangladesh in 1971.

Pakistan and Bangladesh

In 1947, Pakistan established itself as a separate Muslim state on the
Indian sub-continent. In 1971, the eastern part of the country seceded
as Bangladesh.

While 6 India was struggling for independence, Muhammad Ali
Jinnah called for a separate state for the Muslim minority.

6
Negotiating independence for India in 1947
under the leadership of the
British Viceroy Lord
Mountbatten and the leader of the Muslim League

Bloodshed
between Hindus and Muslims led to a partition of the subcontinent and a
migration of the Hindu and Muslim minorities. The primarily Muslim
regions on either side of Hindu India—East Pakistan (today's Bangladesh)
and West Pakistan— became the state of Pakistan, a dominion of the
British Commonwealth, jinnah became the country's first president.

Tension between secularists and political Islamists over the role of
religion, exacerbated by secessionist movements within the country and
the conflict with India over Jammu and Kashmir, dominated politics. When
the situation worsened in 1958, the secularist General Muhammad Ayub
Khan seized power, stabilizing the country by imposing martial law. He
followed a policy of a balance between the Cold War blocs, and in 1965
began a policy of detente with India.

The first free elections in East Pakistan were won by the Awami League
with a large majority. Led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the league sought
autonomy for the region. When Rahman proclaimed the independent People's
Republic of Bangladesh on March 26, 1971, the Pakistani government
responded with force.

India's 2 military support ensured that
1
Bangladesh became independent.

2 Volunteers fight against the Pakistani army for an independent
Bangladesh

1 Traffic jam in Dhaka, the capital of
Bangladesh, November 2004

Since then, democratic governments have
alternated with military regimes in Bangladesh. Plagued by floods, the
country is one of the poorest in the world. After Bangladesh's secession
in 1971, West Pakistan became Pakistan; it established relations with
Bangladesh in 1974.

Until 1977 the dictatorship of 5 Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
guaranteed a secular state, but General Zia ul-Haq seized power in a
coup and planned the Islamization of society. Although the tension
between secular- ,'' ists and Islamic forces continued to dominate
politics, there was a return to free elections in 1985.

3Benazir
Bhutto, prime minister from 1988 to 1990 and 1993 to 1996, became the
first woman to lead a Muslim country.

4General Pervez Musharraf has led
Pakistan's government after the bloodless coup in 1999.

Since 2001, he
has been the United States' key ally in the region, while struggling to
contain internal Islamic opposition to his rule.

5
Pakistani prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, 1976

3
Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto after her second victory in
November 1988

4 General Pervez Musharraf at a press conference
on February 1, 2005

Benazir Bhutto

Benazir Bhutto

Benazir Bhutto (21 June 1953 – 27 December 2007) was a
Pakistani politician who chaired the Pakistan Peoples Party
(PPP), a centre-left political party in Pakistan. Bhutto was the
first woman elected to lead a Muslim state, having twice been
Prime Minister of Pakistan (1988–1990; 1993–1996). She was
Pakistan's first and to date only female prime minister. She was
also the wife of current Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.

Bhutto was the eldest child of former prime minister Zulfikar
Ali Bhutto, a Pakistani Shia Muslim of Sindhi descent and Begum
Nusrat Bhutto, similarly Shia Muslim Pakistani of Kurdish
descent. Her paternal grandfather was Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto, who
came to Larkana District in Sindh before the independence from
his native town of Bhatto Kalan, in the Indian state of
Haryana.Bhutto was sworn in as Prime Minister for the first time
in 1988 at the age of 35, but was removed from office 20 months
later under the order of then-president Ghulam Ishaq Khan on
grounds of alleged corruption. In 1993 she was re-elected but
was again removed in 1996 on similar charges, this time by
President Farooq Leghari. She went into self-imposed exile in
Dubai in 1998.

Bhutto returned to Pakistan on 18 October 2007, after reaching
an understanding with President Pervez Musharraf by which she
was granted amnesty and all corruption charges were withdrawn.
She was assassinated on 27 December 2007, after departing a PPP
rally in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi, two weeks before the
scheduled Pakistani general election of 2008 where she was a
leading opposition candidate. The following year she was named
one of seven winners of the United Nations Prize in the Field of
Human Rights.

India

Since gaining independence in 1947, India has generally followed a
policy of secular modernization, and political life has been dominated
by the Nehru-Ghandi political dynasty. Despite numerous conflicts, the
multiethnic state remains the world's largest democracy.

Shortly after independence was achieved, Muslim Pakistan broke off
from India, but most of the 566 principalities of the subcontinent
became a part of the new Indian state.

Fighting poverty and integrating
the various ethnic groups were the most pressing tasks of the country,
along with the long-running conflict with Pakistan over the
7 Kashmir
region.

7 Nomads in Jammu-Kashmir in the north of India

Socially, the country fluctuated between secular modernization
and traditional Hinduism.

Mahatma Gandhi was murdered by a Hindu fanatic
on January 30,1948, and 9Jawaharlal Nehru, who had held the office of
prime minister since 1946, became the dominant political figure in the
country.

Nehru pursued a socialist path, launching five-year plans to modernize
the economically backward country. Constant unrest in the individual
provinces and the Sino-Indian war of 1962-63 resulted in the loss of
some border provinces. When Nehru died in May 1964, he was succeeded by
Lai Bahadur Shastri.

He too died in office in 1966, and Nehru's daughter
10 Indira Gandhi then became
prime minister.

She
continued the policies of her father, but shifted between delegation and
centralization of authority. Gandhi presided over the Indo-Pakistani war
of 1971, gaining support from the Soviets, France, and the United
Kingdom in the UN Security Council. She was voted out of office in 1977,
but regained power in a triumphant election victory in 1984.

9
Jawaharlal Nehru, 1962

10
Indira Gandhi, 1972

Richard Nixon and Indira Gandhi, 1971

Indira Gandhi

Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi (19 November 1917 – 31
October 1984) was the Prime Minister of the Republic of
India for three consecutive terms from 1966 to 1977 and for
a fourth term from 1980 until her assassination in 1984, a
total of fifteen years. She was India's first and, to date,
only female Prime Minister.

Born in the politically influential Nehru Family, she grew
up in an intensely political atmosphere. Her grandfather,
Motilal Nehru, was a prominent Indian nationalist leader.
Her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, was a pivotal figure in the
Indian independence movement and the first Prime Minister of
Independent India. Returning to India from Oxford in 1941,
she became involved in the Indian Independence movement. In
the 1950s, she served her father unofficially as a personal
assistant during his tenure as the first Prime Minister of
India. After her father's death in 1964, she was appointed
as a member of the Rajya Sabha by the President of India and
became a member of Lal Bahadur Shastri's cabinet as Minister
of Information and Broadcasting.

The then Congress Party President K. Kamaraj was
instrumental in making Indira Gandhi the Prime Minister
after the sudden demise of Shastri. Gandhi soon showed an
ability to win elections and outmaneuver opponents. She
introduced more left-wing economic policies and promoted
agricultural productivity. She led the nation as Prime
Minister during the decisive victory in the 1971 war with
Pakistan and creation of an independent Bangladesh. A period
of instability led her to impose a state of emergency in
1975. Due to the alleged authoritarian excesses during the
period of emergency, the Congress Party and Indira Gandhi
herself lost the next general election for the first time in
1977. Indira Gandhi led the Congress back to victory in 1980
elections and Gandhi resumed the office of the Prime
Minister. In June 1984, under Gandhi's order, the Indian
army forcefully entered the Golden Temple, the most sacred
Sikh shrine, to remove armed insurgents present inside the
temple. She was assassinated on October 31, 1984 in
retaliation to this operation.

When in
June 1984 she ordered military action against radical
8 Sikhs who had
barricaded themselves in the 11 Temple of Amritsar for two years, she
was murdered by her own Sikh bodyguards.

Her son Rajiv Gandhi then came
into government, but he was killed in a 1991 bomb attack.

An evident radicalization of political Hinduism, separatist movements,
natural catastrophes, local resistance to planned dam-building projects,
and corruption scandals have led to repeated unrest in the country since
the 1990s. In 2004, Sikh prime minister Manmohan Singh became the first
non-Hindu to lead India's government.

8
Young Sikh soldiers in Allahabad, 1993

11 Shrine of the Sikhs:
The golden Temple of Amritsar,
January 9, 2003

The Kashmir Conflict

Scene from Srinagar, Kashmir, India

India and Pakistan continue to dispute ownership of the region of
Kashmir, in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent. The
principality, inhabited by a majority of Muslims, had been governed by
Hindu rulers since 1846. Over Pakistani protests, its rulers opted
to join the Indian Union in 1947.

Despite UN mediation since 1951,
increasingly serious and violent conflicts over the region, ignited by
revolts of Pakistan-backed Muslim rebels, culminated in a war in
1965.

While the two countries remain in dialogue, the conflict has
sparked an arms race
between them, with both announcing the acquisition of nuclear weapons in
1998.

Indian soldiers at the border to Pakistan in
Kashmir open fire on
guerrilla positions in the mountains,
May 31, 1999